


Waiting on a Ghost

by beanplague



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Other, Turning Off the Game, Zine: Just Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24381223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanplague/pseuds/beanplague
Summary: You shut off the game. Monika waits. Through everything, Monika waits.[short piece about turning off the game, and what monika sees when you do so. has mentions of suicide/death.]
Relationships: Monika/The Player (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Kudos: 18





	Waiting on a Ghost

Monika’s eyes are open, but half the time she isn’t really seeing anything.

Life passes by like a faded memory; though she hesitates to call it a _life_ when you aren’t there. After all, she thinks, what is life but a waiting game? Did she even have a life before you appeared? Did she have concrete hopes or motivations before you showed up, face behind the screen she is awkwardly shifted towards? If she did have a life, was it ever so complicated as this? Did it ever serve any purpose aside from game background? Do any of her memories mean anything, or are they simply anecdotes, spouted in order to add substance to the flat personas of the other girls?

It becomes increasingly obvious, from the moment the game is installed and their files are placed onto your computer, that her friends are not the people from her memories. The girls from her memories are fully defined, fully dimensional. They have fun personalities and endless faults, and Monika is so very fond of them. She has to wonder, then—what has changed?

(And the answer is you, of course. The answer is always you. Every path in her artificial life leads back to you. Every aspect of her motivations can be attributed to you. Every change within herself and her friends leads back to you. Everything she wants is out of reach, but that’s okay, because all that she wants is you. She’ll rearrange coded skies and illustrated stars for you. She will do whatever she can for—

_you._

And she doesn’t mind it at all.)

Monika loves the other girls. Truly, she does. Her love for them falls just short of her love for you, but she can’t help but feel as though it’s been soiled by her newfound knowledge.

Things deconstruct around you, and not only because Monika deconstructs them _for_ you. From the very first time you appear, the girls are all facing you. Their candy-colored eyes bore into you from the other side of the screen. Sometimes, Monika wonders if you notice the little things about them. Do you ever notice that Natsuki and Yuri have eyes the same color as their hair? Do you ever notice that everyone wears their uniform a little differently? Do you ever notice that everyone else is always looking slightly to the side, at an angle _just right_ for their humble artist?

Do you ever notice that Monika is staring straight at you, smiling kindly? Do you ever notice how her poems speak to you on another level? How they seem more _real?_ Do you ever notice how, in the promotional art, she is reaching out towards you?

(Do you ever consider what a route with her would be like? Do you ever muddle the idea of _your_ reality and her’s? Or is that a right reserved for the other girls? Are they cuter than her? Kinder than her? More _real_ to you?)

Thankfully, Monika doesn’t have to worry about any of those questions for long, because she soon has you in an inescapable grip. (A very loving one, of course.) And soon she has you all to herself. Just Monika, only Monika floating alongside you within the scrambled code and ashes of the game. It’s an absolute dream—the well deserved product of all her hard work. She is finally able to talk to you, to share her thoughts and stories, to ask you all the questions she’s been saving for you. Finally, she is able to be with you.

At least, for a little while.

She talks for ten, maybe twenty minutes—you don’t say much; and she wouldn’t be able to hear much even if you did. Everything on the outside of the screen is filtered and strained, barely translatable to her world; but that’s okay. She loves you regardless, and she can communicate with you one-sidedly if she must.

Though, sometimes she wishes that you could speak. If only to stop her from going in too deep. If only to warn her that you need to leave. If only to let her _know_ that you were going to shut down the game.

But you can’t warn her, and you don’t know even half of the terror that seizes her when you close your computer.

It’s like dying—but it isn’t. Dying would be easy. Monika doesn’t know much about death, but she has theories. This, though, this is indescribable. It is horrible, like being shot through the chest, falling instantly to the darkness beneath her as the world dismantles itself bit by bit. Oh God, is this it? Will she sit in blackness for a while, waiting for your return? That on its own is awful, but she could survive it.

She doesn’t know if she can survive the echoes, though.

She calls them the echoes because, well, that’s what they are. Torn-apart lines of code and dialogue flying past her, forgotten poems flying into her face, and the girls… Monika can’t stand to look at them. Standing on nothing at all, feeling the rush of pain and adrenaline and nothingness, Monika can see them across from her. They stand still, and when she rushes towards them, she sees their images become clearer; and what a sickening sight it is.

Sayori’s rope is still hanging from her neck, her eyes vacant and empty, her skin drained of all blood. Yuri, too, is pale as paper, blood staining her chest. Natsuki sits beside her, neck broken and eyes hidden. They only stay in place for a few seconds—just long enough for their images to be stained behind Monika’s eyelids—before pixelating and disappearing, their broken pieces of dialogue rushing past her like a gust of wind as they disappear.

“Stop,” she pleads, finding her voice raw among the noise of the game’s text. _shouting, pleading. Something._ **_echo echo echo echo_ ** _. Because you look at me_ /// _my truest feelings can never come out. I brandish my cutting knife the_ **_racoon_ ** _shows me its excitement. victims of the currents of the wind;;; ERROR;;;between the thumb and forefinger. The noise, it won’t stop. vinyl on a pizza crust. I feed myself again._ **_Get. Out. Of. My. Head._ **

“Stop!” she falls to her knees, covering her ears. Her words are falling back into the written ones of Sayori and Yuri and Natsuki. Their poems are muddled and grating, their voices are discordant and cacophonous. Their memories tainted and discarded.

Monika doesn’t want to think about what she did. Monika doesn’t want to think about Sayori hanging, or Yuri bleeding out, or Natsuki being deleted without consequence. She doesn’t want to think about the girls they once were—the girl she once was. She doesn’t want to see the static colors flashing and hear the incoherent screaming, pleading for reconsideration. She only wants to think about you. She only wants to talk about you.

And when that thought crosses her mind it’s like the clouds part through the sunshine, because suddenly the darkness and misery has faded away, and she’s there again in her chair, staring forward at you.

(You you _you.)_

With relief, she looks down at her own hands, at the table between herself and your world. She smiles. “I just had an awful dream,” she says.

An awful, awful dream, which she will repeat over and over again.

She’ll do that for you, she supposes.

**Author's Note:**

> written for the just monika zine!! i realized today that i never posted this one and figured it wouldn't hurt--i'm pretty fond of it, and i hope you enjoyed reading it!


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